


Missing

by sherlockpond



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Coping, Love, M/M, Team as Family, The Year That Never Was (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockpond/pseuds/sherlockpond
Summary: Ianto, late one night, reads an article online about writing letters to clear complicated emotions. He picks up a pen and digs around for a notepad under a pile of water bills and council tax receipts.[Set during Jack's disappearance between Series 1 and Series 2.]
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Soo I had no idea I'd be posting again so soon. I thought I was rinsed of writing for that void of time between S1 and S2, but apparently not!  
> I don't know if this strictly follows the canon of what actually happened, but I just started writing and I thought I may as well post it!
> 
> Thank you to princessoftheworlds for looking over it and telling me off for not writing happier material - I promise, Nik, my next fluffy work will be dedicated to you.
> 
> Spelling and grammar mistakes ahoy!

Ianto, late one night, reads an article online about writing letters to clear complicated emotions. He picks up a pen and digs around for a notepad under a pile of water bills and council tax receipts.

_Jack,_

_I don’t know where you’ve gone, but I wanted to write this because it’s been a week and we’re all a little at sea._

_Gwen’s the most hopeful out of the team; she keeps saying we’ll come into work one day next week,and you’ll just be wandering around like nothing’s wrong. I wish I had that same hope._

_Something feels wrong, Jack; you didn’t leave anything to say where you’re going - I keep thinking someone’s taken you somewhere. We did a residual Rift energy scan less than an hour before you disappeared, and there was a vague trace near the water tower, but Tosh said that’s likely to be an anomaly._

_I don’t really know what to do with myself with you gone; that’s mad, isn’t it? You and I had barely been messing around for a month, and yet I feel like I’ve lost a limb. Gwen says you were wearing your coat, so there’s not even the comfort that if you’ve chosen to leave you have anything to come back to._

_Please come back soon, Jack. Owen’s miserable, and Tosh hasn’t smiled in days._

_Ianto_

Life carries on, but Ianto can barely walk around the Hub without being reminded of dark corners where kisses were exchanged or dry cleaning that no longer has an owner. As more days pass, Ianto spends more and more time training in the underground shooting range; he knows it’ll only be a matter of time before something comes through the Rift that Jack either can’t, or won’t, save them from. 

_Jack,_

_Three weeks now, and we’ve all started to shift into a new hierarchy. I don’t think any of us wanted to admit it, but we’re all having to consider that things might not go back to the way they were before you left - it looks like you won’t be back any time soon and we knew that we couldn’t all fight for the role of team leader forever. I don’t really think the other three fully comprehend how much I do, how much I understand what it’s like to run Torchwood. I’m not angry at them for that; it’s not their fault. There wasn’t any hand-raising or voting; instead Gwen offered to lead us with you gone. I could have contested, but I don’t think I could deal with Owen making it his mission to question my every decision. Gwen was the right choice. It’s funny; once the other two had gone home, she came and found me in the archives. I never really thought anyone paid attention to me and what I did. I guess I was wrong._

_I hate it when people beg, but please, please come back soon. Everything feels wrong without you here._

_Ianto_

The seasons change, winter melts into spring, and the weather finally turns to milder climes. Ianto no longer needs to wear a coat to work, or his gloves and a scarf; he collects and bundles them into an airtight box and stows them away in the airing cupboard. The gap between the present and Jack leaving grows visibly wider with each day, the nights grow shorter, memories start to pale. Before he knows it, Ianto's standing on the Plass with a coffee from the Millennium Centre in his hand, watching tourists and locals mill about. It’s been six weeks now. Six weeks of Jack’s office being empty, mirroring the emptiness that fills Ianto’s chest late at night.

_You’re such a bastard. I hope you know that. Six weeks ago, you kissed me in front of everyone and made me feel like I was the most important person in the world, and then you left us - you left me. Do you have any idea how that feels? It’s soul-destroying because I feel like I’m in purgatory. I want to hate you so badly, because when you died, it felt so final. And then you came back, and suddenly, there was hope that things would go back to how they were. Now we all live in this limbo, this groundhog day where we hope that the next thing that comes through the Rift isn’t something that we need your help with._

_You’re a bastard, Jack, for leaving us like this - I don’t care if you were kidnapped now because I know you, you can get out of anything. Now, it just feels like you’re choosing not to come back._

_I_

Ianto’s alone in the Hub on night-duty when the phone rings in Jack’s office. Cautiously walking over to the room, now basically a museum to the phantom of Jack Harkness, Ianto picks up the phone.

_I thought this couldn’t get any worse; any worse than it already is. There was a call late last night, from Flat Holm - god knows how they have signal in the middle of the Bristol Channel. I can’t believe you never told me, Jack, I know all the in’s and out’s of Torchwood, and you never said a word._

_I spoke to one of the nurses, Linda, I think she said her name was - apparently the money for the month hadn’t gone through, so I sorted it all out. When I got back to the Hub, admittedly soaked to the skin and so, so angry, I used your authorisation to access the files on what exactly was going on. Negative Rift spikes. I’d never have noticed them if the evidence wasn’t in front of me._

_I don’t want to have to deal with this by myself, but I know that if I told the team, they’d make things a hundred times worse. Owen would want to study them, see what the Rift does to people; Tosh would blame herself if she couldn’t predict where the next one was going to come from; and Gwen...well, I’m sure you didn’t tell us for the same reasons I’m imagining now._

_We miss you. I miss you._

_I_

The two month mark hits, and the loneliness is starting to get to Ianto. He’s never been an overly sociable person, but he’d enjoyed having Jack in his life, even for the briefest of moments. Now there’s no texts that make him smile or tut audibly at his phone, no calls in the night, or someone _to call_ in the middle of the night. No one to keep his bed warm in the morning.

_Jack,_

_This week has been awful. After an infestation of small, bald alien rats with metal tails in the Hub (we still have no idea what they were), my sister thought it might be a good idea to set me up with one of her friends. I know I shouldn’t care, but it still feels like you’re nearby, that feeling we had in that first week - it really feels like we’re going to bump into you somewhere._

_To keep my sister happy, I just went out with her friend; she was nice, but_ _she wasn’t you_ _it wasn’t the same. I did try. I did. Mostly because I’m sick of sleeping in an empty bed. I wish we could all be a bit more honest, because she was nice and I wanted to just ask her to come home with me and drink wine and just be_ held _. Do you have any idea how that feels, Jack? To just be held and told everything’s going to be alright? Obviously, I didn’t on account of not wanting to look like a madman, but still. You’re the last person who held me, and if I definitely knew you were coming back, I’d wait so that you’d be the only one._

_God, what a pointless rambling. Please come back._

_Ianto_

Ianto never calls his sister’s friend, and he spends the following days feeling numb.

 _How am I meant to find someone else, when I’ve met someone as impossible as you? Did you ever consider what leaving might do to_ me _?_

_Ianto_

Monsters come and go. Weevils crawl up from the sewers, and Ianto spends multiple evenings chasing around trying to catch them or get them back into the pipework. One night, he’s so tired that he ends up crawling into Jack’s bunker and sleeping in the small military bed. When he wakes the next morning, he knows it’s not healthy; he hates how the other three look at him with pity in their eyes.

_I’m starting to give up hope, Jack. You’ve never been away from Torchwood for so long. It’s stupid that I still see echos of you around the city; I thought I saw you in the queue at Asda the other day, but when I looked again it was just some bloke._

_I think it’s time I moved on, properly. I’m going out on Saturday; I need to start fresh and try and find someone to take my mind off you - even if it’s just for an hour. This worrying, it’s constant, and it hurts all the time. We were all supposed to be a team; I never thought you’d be the one to disappear, especially considering your circumstances._

_I need to move on; being stuck in the past is only going to make moving on in the future even worse._

_Hopefully, I’ll be able to stop writing to you; that’ll be a good sign._

_Ianto_

Ianto goes out that weekend and manages to make conversation with a few people who catch his eye. He feels like he’s giving off the wrong signals though; they only talk to him. Towards the end of the night, he sinks two pints in under thirty minutes and manages to give a handjob in a pub toilet to a guy with blue eyes and dark hair. The man kisses him and types his number into Ianto’s phone after they've cleaned up, but it doesn’t _do anything_ for Ianto. He forgets about the number within a few days and carries on working at Torchwood like it’s his sole life function.

_We all still miss you, but things are slowly becoming a new normal. I think we’re finally getting there._

_Ianto_

Nearly three months and Ianto hasn’t had the urge to write in days, all the letters encased in envelopes and tucked into the drawer of his bedside table.

The team is working in the Hub when Gwen’s phone goes off. Ianto looks up from his desk and notices that Tosh is looking in Gwen’s direction, too.

“What do you mean, Andy, a man with the head of a blowfish?”

* * *

**A little over a year later, Jack Harkness sits in the low light of the flat that had once belonged to Ianto Jones; he folds up the last of the letters, wiping tears from his eyes.**

**“You were all better off without me,” he says quietly to the empty room.**

_fin_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr:
> 
> sherlockpond.tumblr.com
> 
> Stay safe!


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